Seana Irvine
I live in the city of Toronto and have spent large parts of my youth living and working in northern Ontario and in remote wilderness areas of Canada. I have always had a passion for cities, culture and nature. I love exploring cities (best on foot and almost always with a camera) to understand their nooks and crannies, how people live, and how cities ever evolve, adapt and change.
I also feel equally content paddling a canoe far from the madding crowds.
A main throughline of my work is the concern with how the destruction of valued places, natural and cultural, displaces and marginalizes people. I believe that cities function best when they provide places that meet the needs of those most marginalized as much as they do the most privileged.
These interests brought me to Evergreen, a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing nature back to cities. My 20+ years of work with Evergreen was inspired by the potential of making urban nature more accessible, and by the benefits that result when communities are actively engaged in stewarding the transformation of underutilized neighbourhood public spaces into inclusive and engaging community places. As Chief Operating and then Chief Strategy Officer with Evergreen, I oversaw a growing staff team, the launch of several new programs and coordinated organizational strategy and planning.
For several years, I was involved in the adaptive reuse of Toronto’s Don Valley Brick Works, from an abandoned brick factory into Evergreen Brick Works, an award winning showcase for innovation and applied urban sustainability. Throughout the redevelopment process, we sought to honour the site’s industrial city building past and its workers, while looking at how these experiences can inspire action for creating more sustainable cities of the future. This experience now serves as the basis of my PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies
at Trent University (Peterborough, Ontario) where my research is exploring how more equity-based approaches to the redevelopment of post-industrial landscapes can contribute to creating more inclusive cities.
I’m also committed to advancing social entrepreneurship, leading and helping organizations whose missions contribute to community wealth and create jobs that are good for people and the planet. This commitment brought me to work and now volunteer as Board Chair with the Centre for Social Innovation,
an organization dedicated to supporting change makers working to get at
the root causes of complex social and environmental problems.
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My academic research is further grounded in my familial background as the daughter of a blue collar factory working father whose job at a typesetting factory was made obsolete in the 1970s due to advancements in digital technology. This personal history informs a perception of the precarity of employment amid forces beyond the control of the individual worker.
Last but not least, I am an active volunteer and serve on several charitable boards, including those focusing on food security, human rights and public engagement in public space improvements. I hold an Honours and Masters degree in environmental studies and watershed planning and have leadership and governance certificates from Harvard Kennedy Executive and the Rotman School of Business.